Monroe County school board says Islamorada baseball field talks still stalled

Coral Shores High School baseball is headed back to the existing grass field at Founders Park, with more than $5 million in promised improvements still stuck in a dispute between the Monroe County School District and the Village of Islamorada.

The holdup came back into focus at the April 7 Monroe County School Board meeting, where school board attorney Dirk Smits said the latest version of the Founders Park agreement still had six or seven major deal breakers. Superintendent Ed Tierney said the district is still working to get a deal done, but the process is complicated because one entity is putting up the money while another controls the land.

That split is at the heart of the stalemate. The school district wants to move ahead with a redesigned baseball complex at Founders Park, including artificial turf, a two-story building behind home plate, dugouts, locker rooms, umpire space, restrooms and concessions. Islamorada owns the park, and the field is used by Coral Shores under a license agreement that still has not been finalized.

The timeline has been moving, but not cleanly. In June 2025, the district backed a conceptual plan that would move the backstop and batter boxes about 22 feet to reduce the risk of foul balls reaching traffic on U.S. 1, and officials said no trees would be removed. On July 10, the Islamorada Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee voted 7-1 to recommend continuing negotiations and to support artificial turf. By Nov. 10, the Islamorada Village Council had voted 4-1 on a preliminary design. Then, at a Jan. 8 village meeting, council members approved revised license language, but the district still had not signed off on the final terms by late January.

The sticking points remain control and notice. The village wants the right to review final designs in a public meeting or workshop and to receive at least 60 days’ notice before construction starts. The district has pushed to extend the termination notice period from two years to five years. At the same time, one council member said the district had no room at the school for a baseball field, while another objected to mistakes in the draft and wanted clearer language on weekend use.

The project’s price tag has also climbed through the process. What was first estimated at more than $5 million was later described as about $6 million to $6.1 million before the school board unanimously approved a final $5.6 million design in January.

For now, the district is considering a plan B if the talks do not produce a workable agreement. That means the 2026 Coral Shores season is expected to be played on the existing grass field, even as the rest of Monroe County’s school sports facilities move at different speeds. In Key West, Patrick Lefere said the Rex Weech athletic facility’s training center structure is essentially complete, stucco work has started on the concession and museum building, and the project remains on track for Sept. 30 completion.